


Perfect Paradise (Tearing at The Seams)

by Lady_Vibeke



Series: Cara Dune & Din Djarin: Tales of Two Space Idiots in Love [17]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Death, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Loss, Minor Character Death, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24741451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Vibeke/pseuds/Lady_Vibeke
Summary: Cara stares, puzzled: before her floats the bust of a little girl, huge dark eyes shine on a beautifully shaped little face whose nose and cheeks bear a sprinkle of freckles. She has no idea who she's looking at, but her heart stops all the same because something inside her stirs at the sight of this person she's never seen before, and it's a feeling so alien it petrifies her on the spot.Amira leaves the hologram in the middle of the table and gracefully retracts her finely manicured hand.“This is Kallis,” she declares matter-of-factly. “She's your daughter.”[ A story about loss, hurt, love, healing, and hope. ]
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune/Original Character(s), Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: Cara Dune & Din Djarin: Tales of Two Space Idiots in Love [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709416
Comments: 30
Kudos: 75





	1. The Shadow of the Past

**Author's Note:**

> This story sneaked into my mind and demanded to be written, even though it's nothing like my usual stories. It's dark, and sad, and full of pain, but also full of love. Hopefully, it will be worth it, in the end.
> 
> The OMC in this fic, Lieutenant Dan Valta, is inspired by Tom Hiddleston, because he's hot and cute and sweet and a real gentleman. (Shoutout to [chamel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chamel/pseuds/chamel) because she and I always have the same ideas and, dammit, this time she did it first! I have witnesses who can confirm I developed this OC before you even posted your fic, I swear! 😂)
> 
> Fic title from Bad Liar by Imagine Dragons.
> 
> WARNING: This story is heavy with angst and emtional hurt. It contains trauma and grief and mentions of death and stillbirth. If these are sensitive topics to you, please, think twice before proceeding.

_'You're so cold,' she couldn't stop thinking, tremblingly clutching the small bundle to her chest as though that could change anything, as though her warmth and her love could somehow be enough to fix this._

_They weren't. She had already tried once._

_It wasn't supposed to end like this. All her struggles, her insecurities, the fears she had overcome... she had gone through hell alone to be here, today, lying in this damn bed in a pool of blood, and for what?_

_She had been ready to give everything and turn her life around for the sake of someone who now would never be anything more than just another painful thought in her memory._

_Suddenly, she was glad Danny wasn't here to see this, to take this pain with her._

_She buried her face into the white towel to smother a sob, her tears disappearing into the soft fabric before they could even leave her eyes. She was holding on too tight but she wouldn't hurt anyone._

_No one would scream._

_No one would cry._

_Ever._

_And sobbing in the unbearable silence she couldn't stop wondering, with a broken heart and a soul full of sorrow, 'Why are you so cold?'_

  
  


*

  
  


Cara realises the commission was a fraud when she sees the stately middle-aged woman spot her and Din across the cantina and move in their direction. It was definitely not the old Utapaun client Greef described when he handed out the puck to them.

Both she and Din instinctively tense and reach for their blasters under the table. Cara's arms tighten around the child sitting on her lap. Gideon has been dead for months and, as far as they know, there is no one left who knows what the kid can do, but the fear still lingers.

The first thing Cara notices, not without a hint of cautious curiosity, is how much this stranger resembles her: dark hair, raven-black eyes, proud bearing. They could almost pass as relatives, if the woman wasn't half Cara's size, all bones and sharp edges.

“Captain Carasynthia Dune,” the woman greets, polite but cold. Her long lashes follow the trail of her gaze, which takes Cara in as though knew exactly who she was looking at.

“Time has been kind to you,” she says, confirming Cara's rising suspicion. “Please, leave the blasters,” she adds with a tight smile. “I'm just here to talk.”

“I have no idea who you are, ma'am,” Cara retorts, but the woman isn't discouraged by her rudeness.

“I don't expect you to.” Without being invited, the stranger takes a seat in front of her and Din, sparing a long look for the latter, who returns her attention without releasing the grip on his blaster. Neither does Cara.

“My name is Amira. I trust you remember my husband, General Kahl Lennox.”

The name nearly makes Cara jump in her seat. It feels off-kilter to hear it here and now, so far away in space and time from the last time Cara last remembers hearing it – or speaking it, she's not sure.

“I served the New Republic under his command,” she says carefully. “I've heard he recently passed away. I'm sorry for your loss.”

She's just talking to buy some time. Her mind is racing to figure out what this woman might want from her, if this is some sort of trick to capture her; the woman, however, doesn't seem particularly interested in her condolences. All the contrary, in fact.

“You shouldn't be,” she says with a wry grin that sends a chill down Cara's spine. “In the past few months I've been trying to amend my husband's many wrongs and you're the last name on my list.”

Cara didn't know General Lennox very well. She remembers him as a rough, ambitious man and a great strategist; he often complimented her on her military skills, back on Endor, but, apart from that, Cara can't say the news of his demise saddened her. Much better people than him died under her own eyes in that period, and she can't bring herself to feel sorry for someone who merely directed operations from an armchair.

“General Lennox never did anything to me you should amend.”

The woman – Amira – plucks an inexistent speck of dust from the sleeve of her fashionable white and golden dress.

“Not that you're aware of, I imagine.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Amira's thin lips curl slightly. “He's the one who put a price on your head. His death marked the end of your troubles: the bounty has been revoked.”

“What?”

It doesn't matter if what the woman is saying doesn't make any sense; all Cara gets away from that was that she can finally stop running. It takes her brain a moment to spark an objection – it could be a lie, a trap, anything.

Amira joins her hands over the table, savouring the effect her words had on Cara.

“Congratulations: you are a free woman, Captain.”

It irks Cara to be addressed as Captain. She hasn't been called that in years and frankly didn't miss it. When the shock and the elation of the news subside, she slowly regains her lucidity back and starts seeing the truth under Amira's composure: she's trying to manipulate Cara, which is interesting, because Cara has no idea what this woman might want to cajole out of her.

“You came all the way from wherever it is you came from to tell me I'm not wanted any more?” she asks sceptically, and what she gets in return in an indulgent little grin that immediately gets on her nerves.

“Not at all. But I'm not sure this is the proper place to discuss this.”

Still on with the manipulation.

Cara tenses. She feels Din's hand upon her knees, giving her a warning squeeze that grounds her enough to swallow her irritation and put on something that vaguely resembles a civil face.

“What's all of this about, ma'am?”

Din squeezes her knee tighter. Too aggressive: noted.

The slight curl on Amira's lips turns suddenly sombre.

“I'm here for a secret, Captain,” she says. “One you've been harbouring for over five years. A secret that is, in fact, a lie.”

  
  


_*_

  
  


_Everything was agony._

_There was pain and tears and screams and an overwhelming feeling of being torn apart from the inside._

_And then the pain ended._

_And there was silence._

_Surreal, gut-wrenching, deafening silence._

_She fell back into the pillows, panting and exhausted, the sweat burning on her face._

“ _What's wrong?” she asked, heart tight and heavy in her chest. Every word felt like sandpaper in her throat. “Why isn't it crying?”_

_There was a long pause, then the doctor finally came back to the bed, carrying something that was too eerily quiet and still to be what Cara was waiting for._

“ _I'm sorry, Captain.”_

  
  


  
  


*

  
  


There is just one secret Cara has. Incidentally, it happens to be strictly connected to the memories the mention of General Lennox awakened in the deep, dark recesses of Cara's mind. That was a time she never recalls pleasantly.

“Could we take this conversation to somewhere more private, Captain?”

Amira's voice shakes her from her trance. Din's hand on her knee is a warm, calming presence she tries not to give in to the panic submerging inside her.

“It's just Cara, now,” she conveys, a bit harshly. “And whatever you have to say, you can say it in front of my husband.”

Amira's attention turns to Din for the first time.

“A Mandalorian husband?” she says with a pleased expression that unnerves Cara more than her enigmatic theatrics. “I hear your people open their homes to many orphaned children.”

She eloquently eyes the kid on Cara's lap.

Din nods. “We love foundlings and our own equally.”

Cara can tell he is studying their guest as intently as she is. She can feel a sheen of cold sweat pooling on the nape of her neck; it makes her shiver, or maybe it's just the dread of what might be coming, not because she's afraid of Din's reaction if he found out her secret; it's rather because she worked hard to bury it away and the last thing she wants is to see it dug up so suddenly by a random stranger with obscure intentions.

“Enough stalling,” she hisses through her teeth. “What do you want?”

“There is someone I would like you to meet.”

Her hands rise and in less than a blink Cara's and Din's blasters are aimed at her; she stops, just for one second, then, utterly unimpressed, reaches for the golden chain around her neck and pulls a medallion out of her dress.

The blasters are still pointing at her when she places the jewel on the table and slides it forward in Cara's direction. She pinches her fingers at the sides of the medallion and it snaps open at the slightest pressure; an hologram springs out of it, much clearer and neater than the ones Cara and Din are used to getting from the bounty pucks.

Cara stares, puzzled: before her floats the bust of a little girl, huge dark eyes shine on a beautifully shaped little face whose nose and cheeks bear a sprinkle of freckles. She has no idea who she's looking at, but her heart stops all the same because something inside her stirs at the sight of this person she's never seen before, and it's a feeling so alien it petrifies her on the spot.

Amira leaves the hologram in the middle of the table and gracefully retracts her finely manicured hand.

“This is Kallis,” she declares matter-of-factly. “She's your daughter.”

  
  


  
  


*

  
  


_Cara had never been the same again after Dan's death, but she would have never believed things could get any worse._

_She had been wrong, of course._

_The emotional consequences of losing Danny had betrayed her instincts and covered up the disconcerting truth long enough for things to get out of hand before it had all come crashing down on her like a cold shower._

_She felt humiliated for being forced to stand back and direct all operations from the base while her men were out there facing death and danger, but she had no other choice: it was either that, or dishonourable leave. Giving her a chance to maintain her position had been an uncharateristically generous gesture from the Board, and Cara suspected it had a lot to do with the fact that Danny had died just a few weeks back. She also couldn't help wondering if they would have still been so lenient with her if it hadn't been for her condition. She didn't really want to know the answer, for her own sake and pride._

_Feeling sorry for herself and the innocent life quietly growing in her womb wasn't an option. Danny wouldn't have wanted that; he would have told her to face this challenge with her head up high and crush anyone who tried to get in her way. She was trying her best, sometimes even despite herself, not to disappoint him._

_As the weeks progressed, Cara found out life was a bit easier to carry on with, with someone else to do it for, even though this someone was merely a small, terrifying cluster of cells nestled in her body._

_She had feared her men, after finding out about her and Dan, would lose their respect for her and refuse to take her orders. She was unspeakably touched when she discovered that, in truth, her predicament had only reinforced their loyalty. Everyone in the base had been fond of Danny, not just for his military skills, but also and especially for his kindness, and though nobody really talked about it, everyone knew her baby was Lieutenant Valta's child and all Cara received from her men was nothing but love and support._

_As her belly swelled, she watched the squads leave the base under another's command and return injured and dejected. Some never returned at all._

_Sending good soldiers to die for some greedy warlord was not Cara's idea of bringing justice to the galaxy, and neither it had been Danny's. She spent months struggling with a haunting conflict between fulfilling her duty and honouring her ideals, and by the end of the pregnancy she reached a final resolve: she would set her fears aside, take her maternity leave and get Danny's child as far as possible from the hell that had taken their father, never to return._

_Nothing in the world could have changed that._

_Nothing, except the next cruel twist of fate._

  
  


*

  
  


The resemblance is uncanny: Cara has seen enough holograms of herself as a child to know how strikingly the little girl looks like her: same clever look, same dimples in her smile. There is something different in the child's left eye, however: among the absolute black of her iris, close to the outer corner of the eye, a shard of sky-blue shines in the sunlight. Cara's heart sinks when she realises that is a painfully familiar shade of blue.

“I don't have a daughter,” she babbles, cursing inwardly at how choked and feeble it comes out. The absurdity of this whole thing is ludicrous: how does this imposter think she can be so easily deceived? Women don't have the luxury men have: they can't have children and not _know._

And yet, Amira politely insists, “You do.”

There is the shadow on her face, as though saying this cost her an indescribable effort.

Cara can't bear the sight of the hologram any longer; she slaps a hand over it to close it and pushes it back to Amira.

“Ma'am, I don't know why you're doing this, but if this is a joke, it's not a funny one.”

Din's hand is still on her leg but it's barely there, barely touching her. He's staring at Amira like she just personally attacked him. Cara wants to tell him it's all a lie, that this woman is a lunatic, but Amira's composure is so frustratingly unflinching and cold...

“She was born five years ago on Endor,” Cara hears her say.

Her panic spikes.

This can't be happening. This woman can't possibly _know-_

“The eleventh day of the eleventh month.”

“Stop,” Cara begs – _begs,_ like a pathetic weakling – facing away from her icy stare. Din's hand seeks hers, grabs it and hold it tight until it hurts, and the hurt helps Cara maintain her focus, even though chaos is raging inside her like a storm.

Without mercy, Amira continues, “I was there, the night you gave birth to her. I heard your screams.”

“Whoever tipped you off about this,” Cara cuts in, “was clearly misinformed. That night of five years ago...” she bites her lip, trying to swallow back the lump swelling low in her throat.

“That night,” she starts again, feeling Din's stunned look weighing upon herself, “I had a boy,” she says, and every single syllable kills her inside. It takes all the strength in her soul to gather herself and force the last, unbearable words out of her lips, “and he was stillborn.”

All the blows and stabs she has taken in her life were easier to take than these few words. She never meant to say this out loud, never intended to face the crude truth she worked so hard to leave behind for good.

And Din is there, sitting beside her in silence, probably wondering who she is, because she certainly isn't the woman he married. The woman he married would have told him that, in what now feels like another lifetime, she had another man and carried his child.

“No,” Amira breaks through her desperate thoughts and drags her back to reality with a pointed stare. “You had a girl. A beautiful, healthy little girl,” she states, so candidly that for a moment Cara believes her.

“The dead baby they put in your arms that night... that was my son.”

  
  


*

  
  


“ _Where do you think you're going?”_

_Cara ripped the IV from her arm and threw the covers aside, deliberately ignoring the medic trying to stop her._

“ _Back to my men. I've been locked in here long enough.”_

_She had just woken up and couldn't remember how she had ended up in here, but she didn't care. All she remembered was the shooting at the village across the mountain ridge, the sudden pain in her leg, and then the darkness. She had a minor wound in her leg, a superficial blaster shot that hurt like hell but wouldn't prevent her from fighting, with the help of some decent painkillers._

_She started unfastening the back laces of the robe they had put on her, but Doctor Glass grabbed her wrists, as gently as firmly, and pushed her back on the bed. She was a gray-haired woman in her early sixties and her build was sturdy enough to overpower Cara easily, in this state of drowsiness._

“ _Captain Dune,” Glass sighed, “by protocol you won't be allowed on the field for quite a while.”_

_Cara stubbornly struggled to shake the woman off herself, to no avail. She felt weak and vaguely nauseous. Now that she thought about it, she had been feeling dizzy when she got shot: she had stalled and paid the consequences of her distraction; her men had risked their lives to carry her to safety._

“ _I'm not getting benched for a lousy flesh wound,” she spat. She was horrified when she realised how slurred she sounded._

_Glass shoved the IV back into Cara's arm and swatted her hand away when Cara tried to pull it out again._

“ _It's not about your wound,” she said with something like pity lacing her voice. “You are with child.”_

_Cara stilled. She fell back on the bed under gravity's suddenly invincible pull. Her ears started ringing, so loudly she wasn't even sure what he had heard was real or just an ironic distortion of something else._

_The abrupt clench in her stomach warned her an instant before she felt the bile rise to her mouth; she curled forward and coughed, retching a lump of greenish, bitter liquid that left her grimacing in disgust._

_Doctor Glass ignored the pool of vomit on the floor, grabbed Cara by her shoulders and guided to lie back on the pile of pillows._

“ _Captain, did you hear what I said?”_

_Cara was wiping the back of her hand over her mouth and wasn't really paying much attention to anything but the feeling of her guts threatening to spill out any moment._

“ _Uh?”_

“ _You're pregnant.”_

_So she hadn't imagined it. What sort of joke was this?_

“ _There must be a mistake-”_

_Doctor Glass shot her a severe but strangely sympathetic glance._

“ _You and Lieutenant Valta should have been more careful.”_

_Cara felt the pull at her stomach again. This time, when she bolted up and turned to throw up, Glass was ready with a bassinet and held her hair back as Cara coughed over and over again._

“ _This is ridiculous,” she croaked. “I have an implant, check again.”_

_She was trembling head to toe. It was the vomiting, she decided._

_Unwanted memories broke through the dam she had carefully built over the last few weeks: blue eyes, soft kisses, strong arms holding her tight, a warm, soft voice whispering sweet nonsense in her ear as stars exploded behind her eyelids..._

“ _Then your implant is defective.”_

_There was no judgement in Doctor Glass' hazel eyes, which made everything ever worse for Cara, whose spinning head was buzzing madly with thoughts and feelings she couldn't even keep up with._

_This couldn't be real._

_It just_ couldn't.

_Especially now that Danny- that he-_

“ _Your hCG levels leave no room for doubt, Captain,” Glass continued, “you're likely past the first trimester. I suggest you come to terms with the situation, because this far along your options are quite limited.”_

  
  


  
  


*

  
  


Din's breathing has changed. His posture has changed. The weight of his look upon Cara feels different, too.

The way his voice trembles is a dart to her chest when he speaks.

“Cara. What is she talking about?”

Cara can't move.

This was never supposed to be happening. She shoots a glare at Amira, struggling to get every breath in and out of her aching lungs. She feels like someone is trying to choke her and she realises with a pang of dread that it's because she's fighting back the tears welling up in her eyes.

“Cara?”

“It's nothing,” she mutters, “just dead people who won't be coming back.”

She prays he can just ignore it and let go, but she knows it's just pointless wishful thinking. She has no right to ask him to pretend he never heard anything. This is huge, larger than anything they've ever faced, larger than life itself, and now that it's out there is no way she can push it back into oblivion.

“You had a baby?”

It kills her. It kills her that he asks so softly, so cautiously. She doesn't deserve this kindness.

The answer – the awful, unacceptable answer – is no, she didn't. Her baby never drew his first breath.

The man she loved, their child... neither made it out of Endor.

She can remember everything as if it happened just yesterday – the feeling of becoming a stranger in her own changing body, and the baby, alive and strong inside her, growing, moving, kicking. It was a strange thing, sad to experience alone, but also beautiful, at times, and all along she nurtured that little life wondering what would be of them in the future, what she could possibly have to offer that baby destined to be born in the middle of blood and violence.

Sometimes, caught in a storm of emotions, she would feel the little one stir under her palm, and the noose of awareness around her neck would tighten, crushing her breath and her soul, a merciless, unrelenting reminder that kept her heart from healing all through those long months.

There was no end to the bitterness and the loneliness tightening her throat whenever, alone in the dark, with the baby curling under her palm, she would find herself thinking, ' _Danny would have loved this'._

The thought that Danny never knew hits her like a bullet. All of a sudden their air feels too hot and thick to breathe; she jolts up, the child clutched to her chest as she hurries her way through the cantina, stumbling into chairs and patrons without any consideration for either. All she wanted was to be outside, free, in the fresh open air.

Stepping into the sunlight blinds her burning eyes. She shuts them tight, curling over the child in her arms like he's the only thing keeping her from crumbling apart. In a way, he is.

It took her so long to get used to the idea of being someone's mother, years after losing her child, but now she just can't imagine not having this little green brat cuddled against her chest before going to sleep at night, or forcibly crawling into bed between her and Din for the mere pleasure of making their rest as uncomfortable as possible. Where would she be, now, if her baby hadn't died?

It's only seconds later that the door of the cantina swings open and she hears familiar steps approaching her. Din's hand is on her back at once, light and comforting, and bit of Cara's tension melts away in the warmth of his touch.

She doesn't deserve him, doesn't deserve this man. How can he be here for her when he just learned what she kept from him all this time?

“There was a man. There was a baby. I lost them both. The baby... he was dead before I could even hold him,” she murmurs into the kid's robe. His fuzzy ears twitch at the brokenness of her tone and one tickles under her chin, extorting a weak, soundless laugh from her lips.

She stiffens when Din's helmet comes to rest against the side of her head. There is so much love in this small gesture that Cara, overwhelmed, nearly falls to her knees.

“You never said anything.”

He's not accusing her. She can tell he just wants to understand, and how can she blame him? She fears she doesn't have long enough to live to make up to him for keeping this secret from him.

She turns in his embrace and tentatively looks up at him, glad, for once, that she can't see his face through his visor.

“I just... couldn't,” she whispers, the white lies she was fumbling for slipping away through the turmoil in her mind. “Din, I- I spent so long trying to forget, I just didn't-” she has to bite her lip to keep it from trembling, “didn't want to remember...”

The child wraps his arms around her neck and coos timidly into the crook of it. It makes Cara cringe in fear that she's hurting him, pressing him too tight to her chest, but all he wants is to remind her he's there.

Cara's knees are shaking.

This is what Danny wanted for her, why is she feeling so guilty to be here, alive and happy, with a family of her own?

Din cups her face into his gloved hand.

“I can't imagine what you went through,” he says, his thumb wiping the ghost of a tears from Cara's face.

She can't cry.

She _can't._

If she does, how will she stop?

As if reading her mind, Din moves his arms around her. The embrace of his beskar is strong and familiar on her skin; she clings to it, nuzzles her face in his shoulder and lets him hold her and rock her gently, the kid, nestled between them, sighing happily.

“You don't have to talk about it,” Din whispers in her hair, “but you can't carry this pain alone. Just let me be here for you,” he begs. He sounds desperate. Something in his tone makes Cara picture him on his knees, helmet gone, head and shoulders heavy. “ _We will share all,_ remember?”

“Danny's gone, our baby's gone” she chokes out feebly, “there's nothing to talk about.”

Din hold s her tighter. His hand presses her face against him.

“This is not okay, Cara,” he mutters as his fingertips dig into her scalp until it hurts, “and not fair. To yourself and to them.”

 _'Tell him, Dune,'_ says Danny's voice in her head, and it sounds so real Cara has to screw her eyes shut to chase away the fleeting feeling of being in his arms instead of Din's.

So she tells him.

Tells him about how she and Danny met, how they became good comrades, then friends, then something else they chose not to acknowledge. Not until Danny decided to pull out his heart from under his sleeve on his death bed.

And then she tells him the other piece of the story, the one where, burdened with a love declaration she had lost any chance to return, she found herself face to face with the dirtiest trick life could have played on her.

“When I found out, I was too far along to do anything about it. I was terrified and so broken... I would have made a terrible mother. I didn't even want to be one. I did it for Danny, only for him. While I was in labour, all I could think of was that I was about to ruin someone else's life. I should be glad I never had a chance to.”

“You don't mean it,” soothes Din, and he's right: scared as Cara was, she was attached too deeply to that last little bit on Dan she had left. She had never wanted to be a mother, but Danny's child... it had changed every perspective.

She _tried,_ she really did. It just was never meant to be.

She had thought nothing could be worse than holding Danny's hand while he died. She realised how wrong she had been the very day that should have been her happiest.

Her cheek is resting over Din's shoulder, hot and wet, when she slowly begins, “The baby wasn't crying. I knew straight away something was off, even before-” She trails off, her breath failing her. It takes her a moment before she can muster the strength to go on.

“They wrapped him in a cloth and put him in my arms. He wasn't moving. He wasn't breathing. He was... so cold.

I don't know why I started crying. I should have felt relieved, but it just... it _hurt._ It hurt so much. And it hurt even worse after. Apparently, you don't stop being a mother just because your pregnancy ended in tragedy. There would be no baby to feed and care for, but my stupid body didn't know. I was packed with useless maternal chemicals I didn't know what do to with. It was like my whole being was screaming, _'Where is the baby? You need to feed him, you need to be there for him!'._ But there was no one to be there for, and I felt so... empty.

Emotionally, I was a mess. Physically, it was even worse, and harder to ignore. My breast was constantly sore. It took _weeks_ for the hormones to disappear and finally let me be myself again. I thought so, at least. I didn't look like this before, you know? This shape – these hips, these breasts – it was all a consequence of the pregnancy. Since that night, whenever I looked at myself in a mirror, I'd see the body of a mother who never got to be one. My own reflection is a reminder of everything I've lost.”

Her physique as it used to be is a vague, faded memory. Same strong muscles, same mischievous eyes, thinner legs, thinner waist, smaller chest. A girl versus a woman. It's ironical how people find her even more attractive, now, when all she sees looking at her figure is nature's failure.

“I spent years roaming the galaxy aimlessly, half hiding, half hoping someone would catch me and put an end to everything.” Her lips move over Din's beskar, collecting the salty taste of her own tears. “I tried to dull my feelings in brawls and troubles. Every bruise, every wound was a blessing. I couldn't find a meaning in anything... until I met you and the kid.”

  
  


  
  


_*_

  
  


_There was still blood on Cara's hands when she was finally allowed into the infirmary._

_She had lost track of time, out there, pacing the deserted corridor like a caged animal left alone to starve. Her head was buzzing with a flurry of confused memories and incoherent feelings, reason battling against the raging storm of emotions spreading like wild fire inside her._

_She still had the explosion in her eyes and in her ears, she could still feel the ground shaking under her feet – real and metaphorical ground – like it had during the detonation._

_Her step was unsure when she walked in, her injured arm hanging from a sling around her neck. Dan was lying in a bed across the room, alone, with a patch over his left eye and so many burns and wounds Cara was caught by a sharp wave of nausea._

“ _It's gonna be okay,” she told him as she sat by his side. “A couple of weeks and you'll be out of here.”_

_He shook his head, squeezing her hand, and broke into a blue smile._

“ _I'm not gonna make it, and you know it.”_

_He barely looked like himself under all those bandages and dried blood, and yet, somehow, he was still irresistibly charming._

“ _For kriff's sake, Danny,” she grunted, her jaw clenching, “shut that stupid mouth.”_

_He was weak but gathered whatever little energy left in him to bring her hand up and press her palm against his chest._

“ _I know we have an unspoken understanding about us,” he said with a raspy laugh, “but given the situation I'm going to grant myself a special permit and spill it all out.”_

“ _What are you talking about?” she scoffed, but before she was even finished he said:_

“ _I love you. I've always loved you.”_

_The words rang deafeningly in Cara's ears, absurd and foreign. She was both furious and dismayed: she and Dan were just friends, very good friends who fought together and slept together because they both needed something to come back to when, at the end of the day, they crawled back to the base with nothing in their hands and hearts but death and destruction. He wasn't- couldn't be in love with her._

“ _The painkillers are making you delirious.”_

“ _Please, don't cry.”_

“ _I'm not crying,” Cara protested. She wasn't crying. She wasn't. She_ wasn't.

_Under her palm, Dan's breath was faint and fatigued._

“ _Dune,” he called, since she was refusing to look at him. “Don't forget your promise, okay? Go on, be happy.”_

“ _Dan-”_

_He took her hand to his lips and kissed it. He was crying, too._

“ _Promise again,” he pleaded with a shuddery voice that made Cara bit her lip to suppress a sniff. “I need to know you'll let yourself be happy again, one day.”_


	2. Remember How We Used To Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cara confronts the past she tired so hard to forget. Din only wants her to be okay. Her perspective starts changing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is now a 3-part story. Sigh. I tried to stick to the plan, but this story hasn't been writing itself the way I thought it would, so I can only adjust the chapters accordingly. Next one is the last, I swear: the angst fest is almost over.
> 
> Chapter title from To Wish Impossible Things by The Cure. [This song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzZ-Mgi1My4) is a perfect soundtrack for this chapter, especially these lines:
> 
> _It was the sweetness of your skin  
>  It was the hope of all we might have been  
> That filled me with the hope to wish  
> Impossible things_
> 
> Enjoy? ^^

Din's silence stretches for so long Cara is almost starting to believe he's doing it out of politeness, in order to keep his disappointment inside.

Letting Din down, after all he did for her, after all he gave her, feels like a betrayal she can't forgive herself for. She didn't mean to hide anything from him. All she wanted was to pretend there was never another life, another man, another baby. She wanted to give all of herself to _this_ man, _this_ baby, because they are _here,_ and they need her, and there is nothing she can do for the ones she lost.

Din's helmet protects the privacy of his thoughts, shields his eyes and his face, a luxury Cara can't claim for herself; she's bare, stripped of her defences, and can only shut up and take whatever Din might say to her.

She didn't _lie,_ she keeps telling herself. She just wasn't strong enough to carry the truth into this new life full of hope and promises.

They're sitting on the bench just outside the cantina. Cara has the kid sitting on her lap, gurgling happily at the squishy ball he has in his hands. There is a smile on her lips, battling with the tears stinging at the corners of her eyes. She doesn't know how to face this, the past clashing with the present, the memories she wasn't prepared to face rattling in the dark cracks of her heart she confined them into. They were never meant to come back.

Quietly, Din shifts closer to her, a faint sigh coming through his modulator. He raises his arm and wraps it around Cara's shoulders, gently pulling her to himself. He reaches out for the hand she's keeping on the child's tummy and sneaks his fingers between hers.

“Now I can see,” he says softly, “why you were so reluctant to hold him, in the beginning.”

The broken breath Cara lets out sounds too much like a sob.

Din is starting to connect the dots. She feels like a fool, now, for believing she could keep something like this from him.

“When IG put him in my arms...” she mutters, horrified by how croaky she sounds, “something clicked. I don't know how I didn't fall apart right there.” Her arms tighten around the child, who looks up at her curiously. “All I could think about was, _'Protect him. Don't let anything happen to him. Don't lose another one,'..._ I felt that when you told me to leave you to die, too. You said exactly the same words Danny spoke before-” Her voice cracks; she tries to clear her throat with a weak sniff. “When I left you behind, it was like losing him all over again. You left me alone with a child. He left me alone with a child... if you and this little shit had died like _they_ did-” The words die on her tongue, smothered by a sudden lack of air in her lungs. “Din, what would I-”

Din holds her so tight it hurts. It's a good kind of hurt: it gives her the grounding she needs, keeps her from falling apart.

“We didn't,” he says soothingly. His voice sounds brittle, too. “We're here with you.”

He lets her feel it, his closeness and the kid's. Lets her soak up their presence, lets her lean into him and, if only for a little while, lets her be weak and fragile in the safety of his embrace.

A part of Cara feels sick for how pathetic she must look right now; another part of her, the one that's screaming, knows the silence has lasted too long, it cannot be caged any more.

“Cara,” he begins tentatively, “if what Amira claims is true-”

“ _Don't,”_ she warns through her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut. She hates how her chin is trembling. “I lost my baby, I _accepted_ it. That woman has no right to pop out of nowhere and have the nerve to dump that banthashit on me!”

“You really don't believe her?”

Cara scoffs. “You _do?”_

It doesn't make any sense. _Cara_ is the impulsive one. Din is the calm, rational one. He's the one who should tell her they can't trust that woman, that this is likely a trap or a con of some sort. She needs him to remind her to stay rational, right now, and Din is encouraging the believe things that can never be, instead.

She can sense his hesitation in the way he adjusts his arm around her shoulders and scoots a little closer.

“Her story would sound much more absurd if Kallis wasn't such a perfect mini Cara,” he says. A smile shines faintly through his tone, an optimism Cara can't bring herself to share. “She looks so much like you it takes my breath away.”

She sees it, too, but believing is too dangerous, too scary, and she's already been through enough pain, has had enough losses in her life.

“She could be a clone,” she objects, “or artificially engineered, or-”

She _can't_ let herself believe. She can't possibly survive the pain of losing her child twice.

“Amira's lying,” she insists. “She _must_ be. This is too fucked up to be true.”

“Why would she lie about this? What's her gain?”

“I don't know but I don't believe her.”

Din sighs, a slow, careful sigh that tells Cara she's not going to like what he's about to say.

“You'd risk letting go of your daughter? You'd take this chance because Amira's story might be a lie?”

_Daughter._

It doesn't sound right.

She never had a daughter. She was going to have a son, Danny's son, but she lost him, too.

Something stirs in her mind, a memory – pale and dusty from the years it's been locked in the darkest recesses of her soul. She suddenly remembers that single shard of lucidity that had been lost among the ferocious irrationality of her grief, how cold the baby felt in her arms. She had kept him warm and safe inside her all those months: dead or alive, he shouldn't have been so cold. He shouldn't have been at all.

Cara's chest tightens. Amira's story is starting to make some sense, after all.

“It doesn't matter,” she mutters, though she can feel her obstinate walls of denial cracking, “she already has a mother.”

She regrets saying it the very moment the sound of her own words reaches her ears. Even if that little girl _is_ her baby, she's someone else's child, now. Someone else raised her, someone else taught her to speak, to walk, someone else held her through her nightmares.

Cara feels sick.

This is a new sorrow, one that still doesn't erase her grief for the little boy she buried years ago next to his father in the peace and quiet of the forest of Endor.

“She does,” says Din, easing his grip around her shoulder just enough to pull back and look down at her, “but she's yours, too.”

Cara looks away.

“Yeah, and what would that make me? A spare mom? Some stupid replacement?”

This is a chapter of her life she never meant to open again. Closed and classified, gone forever... it wasn't supposed to come back to haunt her, and with such cruel irony.

Din doesn't get it, or doesn't want to. It appears that he doesn't care about the secrets buried in Cara's past: all he wants is to make sure she doesn't have to face any more regrets.

“How about just her mother?”

He takes her hand, squeezes it gently through his gauntlet. She can feel his smile, warm and reassuring, even through the beskar. The kid smiles up at her, too, sitting on her lap with his head thrown back against her. Cara can't help a timid smile of her own, surrounded by way more love and understanding than she thinks she deserves.

“You think you're less of a mother to this brat because you weren't here since the beginning?” asks Din, running his free hand along one of the kid's ears. “Someone gave birth to him, someone lost him or gave him up. Aren't you glad he's not alone? That he's with us and he's loved?”

The tightness in Cara's chest becomes pain, sharp and searing. Because Din is right – of course he is – and despite the rage and the sorrow, deep inside Cara realises she _wants_ to believe Kallis is hers, that Danny still lives and breathes through their daughter.

If anyone had told her that hope can hurt more than despair, she would have laughed in their face, once. Now she feels like this little shred of hope budding in her heart might kill her any moment.

“Would you tell me about him?”

Cara freezes. Din's voice is tender and careful; she can see his warm brown eyes through it, the slight curve in his lips.

“Danny?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you loved him.”

A single tear falls to the child's head, making him blink in confusion.

“I didn't say-” Cara begins, but Din's hand clutches upon hers.

“You didn't have to,” he says softly. Cara's fingers tighten around his. The tightness in her chest morphs into some kind of strange, reluctant serenity. All the stupid, shallow words in the galaxy couldn't say _'I love you'_ as clearly and loudly as this.

“Tell me about him. Please.”

  
  


*

  
  


_They lay naked under the heavy rain hammering upon the tent, the cot too narrow to accommodate them both, but somehow, what with them seemingly unable to sleep too far apart, it was anything but an issue._

_Danny's hand was resting on Cara's side, stroking gently around the spot where the dressing protected her blaster wound. His arm was bandaged, too, in several spots, a consequence of an explosion shooting metal shards in all directions, wounding the lucky ones, leaving the others in a death bed of mud and rocks._

“ _We lost five men today,” Cara grumbled, nestled under Dan's arm. “_ Five, _Dan. Five of our own who will never go back to their families and their lives. For what? The war is over and people are still dying.”_

_The sigh Danny let out was long and full of an exhaustion that had nothing to do with his physical state._

“ _This is not how I'd imagined we'd be doing at this point.”_

_A thunder shook the tent. Cara sighed, too._

“ _Yeah. Doesn't feel like much of an improvement, right?”_

_Danny was staring up at the lightnings flashing through the roof above them, the aggravated expression on his face appearing and disappearing at the rhythm of what felt like a heartbeat of light and dark._

_The contraction knitting his brows up in the centre was a trademark trait of him Cara had grown fond of through time, along with the suave, velvety timbre his voice always gained whenever he was talking to her._

_She refused to think of him as anything but a friend sharing a bed with her for mere mutual convenience, in moments like these, when the silence couldn't tame the loudness of their thoughts, she had to fight back a rising awareness that whatever it was she didn't want to acknowledge was growing stronger and stronger every day. Maybe even stronger than her._

“ _Whatever happens out there,” said Danny out of the blue, “if you make it out of this hell and I don't, promise me you'll find something to live for.”_

_He was still looking at the roof of the tent, but the grip of his fingers around her arm was harder._

“ _Don't say that,” she chided. She didn't know why he was telling her this, why he would assume she would need to find a reason to live for without him. There was nothing between then but professional respect and a peculiar friendship. Sex didn't count: it was as good and harmless a distraction as sparring or drinking would have been._

_Danny shifted beneath her, cupped a hand around the side of her neck and made her look up at him._

“ _I need to know you'll move on,” he murmured, his thumb stroking her cheek._

_This was a conversation Cara wasn't particularly keen on having: war was easier to face if you didn't think you might die any moment._

_And yet suddenly death didn't seem the worst thing that could happen to Cara. She tried to imagine life without Dan, being out there without his smile to turn, without the comfort of his presence beside her when, at night, they found each other after another day of horrors._

_Even through the darkness, Cara could see Danny was looking at her the way they'd sworn they would never look at each other, and though she knew feelings couldn't be helped, she hated him a little for that._

“ _There is a life for you out there, Cara. Someone else will come and make you happy again. I need you to promise me you'll find them and live for the both of us.” Dan gave her something like a blue smile. “Can you do that for me?”_

_She didn't know what made her whisper, “I promise.”_

_Danny kissed her. It was slow and desperate, and she could feel three little words being breathed into her every time his lips touched hers, over and over with growing hunger. Her instinct to push him away, to push away what he was trying to tell her, got swallowed by something else, a thought stuck in the back of her throat, fighting to come out._

_She couldn't afford to say it. It would only make everything even more complicated._

_Some things were better left unspoken._

“ _Can we get back to talking about how nice Shun's ass is?” she begged when they broke apart._

_Unsurprisingly, Danny laughed._

“ _Mine is nicer, though.”_

_Cara rolled her eyes._

“ _Mine is even nicer,” she said, stealing another kiss before resting her head upon his chest._

_Danny laughed again._

“ _Can't argue such an objective truth.”_

” _I thought we'd agreed you'd keep your appreciations to yourself,” Cara objected playfully._

_Danny wrapped his arms around her naked frame and nuzzled his nose into her hair._

“ _You put the words in my mouth.”_

“ _You're such an idiot,” giggled Cara, feeling unbearably happy and safe despite everything._

_Reality could stay outside, for tonight, she mused as Danny's hand buried in her hair and caressed her fondly while his lips touched her forehead curved into a smile._

“ _I guess I am, Captain.”_

  
  


*

  
  


Getting back into the cantina is one of the hardest things Cara has ever forced herself to do.

If she closes her eyes, she can see Kallis's face staring at her from the hologram, and it doesn't matter if that little girl is _all_ Cara in her looks: the kindness in her eyes and that minuscule shard of blue are Danny's mirror.

She wants to convince herself she's been manipulated, that she's only deceiving herself, but this only keeps making more and more sense the more she thinks about it.

When she sits back down at the table with Din and the child, Amira is scrutinises her through her long, dark lashes, mouth tight. She's barely touched her drink.

“I will hear what you have to say,” Cara announces coldly, “but I want you to know I don't trust you.”

Amira gives her a wry smirk.

“That will suffice, for now.” Her attention shifts to Din for a second before returning to Cara. “Did your husband convince you to give me a chance?”

“He's much softer than me.”

Amira's smirk spreads imperceptibly.

“You haven't changed your taste in men, I see.”

This woman's impeccable manners get on Cara's nerves, and the fact that she seems to know so much about Cara only makes it worse.

“What would you know about my taste in men?”

“If the rumours about you and him were correct – and, judging by your reaction, I suppose they were,” says Amira, “Kallis is Lieutenant Dan Valta's child.”

There is no reason to be surprised, but Cara's heart still misses a beat. Hearing a perfect strangers talk about Dan with such confidence is unsettling. How many of the secrets of the base did this woman pick up from her elegant house in the middle of the barracks?

“Give me one single reason to believe you,” hisses Cara.

Din's hand comes to rest upon her knee again. It helps her tame some of the venom in her tone.

“You never wondered how you got away with that?” asks Amira. “Why you weren't prosecuted for having an affair with a subordinate?”

 _We had more pressing matters to worry about than flings between soldiers,_ Cara thinks bitterly.

“What does this have to do with my baby?”

“My husband used to say that you were one of his most prized elements: you had the troops wrapped around your little finger. They trusted you blindly, you had their complete loyalty, and that made you a valuable leader – irreplaceable. Kahl and the Council took away the only reason you had to leave the army, then made sure your affair with Valta was buried so that they could keep you where they needed you.” The hatred in Amira's black eyes pierced Cara like a dagger. “They used my dead baby to torture and manipulate you.”

Cara tries to picture what it would be like, the trauma of your baby being stillborn and then taken from you to be used like a pawn in a dirty game. It doesn't matter if the boy isn't the child she gave birth to: she loved him and she grieved him as her own, and this is a pain that will never be mended. Slowly, she's starting to realise that it's like both she and Amira had two children that night, but while Amira still had one in her arms, Cara lost both of them.

Until now.

“They tortured you as much as he tortured me,” she says, touched by an unexpected surge of sympathy.

Amira's throat bobs as she gulps.

“Yes.”

“Say I believe you – which I don't – why show up now? With your husband gone, you found out single parenting is not your thing?”

The reaction she gets is not what she anticipated: instead of frowning, Amira spreads her lips into a sad smile.

“I'm ill, Cara,” she conveys calmly, “and I don't know how long I have left. I cannot justify what my husband did six years ago, nor what I did when I took your daughter, but you must believe me when I say it was the only way to save her.”

Strategically, what she's saying makes sense: letting the baby girl live would have been a risk, there would be dangerous evidence, especially seeing how much Kallis resembles Cara. But a woman who had come to the hospital wing to give birth leaving the place with a baby was above suspicion, even General Lennox must have seen that. He saw an opportunity and seized it: his wife would have a baby and he wouldn't get his hands dirty with the blood of an innocent.

“Would you even have come to me if you hadn't been dying?” Cara can't help asking, though she has a feeling she already knows the answer.

“Of course not,” says Amira with an indulgent shake of her head. “Kallis is the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me, I wouldn't have given her up so easily. You can kill me, if it pleases you,” she adds, noticing Cara's loathing glare, “I won't resist.”

“Don't tempt me.” Cara's mouth twists into a disgusted grimace. The urge to grab Din and the kid and leave is strong, but not as strong as the raw longing coiling deep into her heart keeping her tethered here.

She's still not sure what is happening, but she's not going anywhere until she has figured it out.

“I will not lie and say mine was an act of selflessness,” continues Amira, taking a small sip from her glass. “I convinced my husband to spare an innocent's life, but I also got to go home with a child in my arms. Kallis gave me a reason to stay alive when all I wanted was to succumb to my grief. She gave me the strength to give my husband what he deserved.”

The phrasing of the last sentence feels oddly ambiguous.

“You killed him,” Cara realises, not without a certain shock. Perhaps she underestimated this woman.

“Yes,” Amira confirms pleasantly, and also quite proudly. “As soon as I found out my clock was ticking. You and Kallis are safe, now. All of you are safe,” she rectifies, embracing Din and the child with a look that can only be described as _motherly._

This is one thing Cara owes her: not her own safety, but safety for Din and their kid. She can finally stop feeling guilty for constantly exposing them to terrible risks with her mere presence. It's a gift, and she won't take it for granted, nor can she take for granted the chance that is being offered to her, though it's so hard to process.

“All I ask,” says Amira with a glint of sadness in her gaze, “is to die knowing my beloved girl is with her mother.”

  
  


*

  
  


“ _Do you think we're gonna get out of this shit alive?”_

_Dan lowered the bottle of liquor from his lips, swallowed with a funny grimace, then turned to Cara with an amused half a grin_

“ _Wow, Dune, such charming thoughts to share at this early hour.”_

_The stars were impossibly bright, tonight, a thick blanket of white light unfolding through the blackness of the sky, painting it in shades of blue and green._

_Cara leant back against the tree and stole the bottle from Dan to draw a generous sip._

“ _I haven't had any plans for the future in years,” she shrugged. “I guess I've always assumed I'd fall in the line of duty.”_

“ _I'd rather you didn't,” said Dan under his breath. Cara could feel his attention upon herself, could picture his light scowl so perfectly, even without turning around._

“ _Yeah, well,” Cara chuckled, “you know how it is, around here.”_

_She didn't know how she and Dan Valta had grown so close. It must be something that had happened in between a kiss and an embrace, blossoming surreptitiously from their little moments together, through the solace they found in each other. It had started as a joke, a way like any other to vent some stress and burn the adrenaline, and it quickly had become something neither of them seemed to be able to give up._

_There was nothing wrong about it: they were consenting adults, they were free to pursue whatever pleasure they could find in this shitty life they had._

“ _I have plans,” Danny confessed, causing Cara to turn to him with eyes wide in surprise. He shrugged modestly in return. “I do. Though I suppose 'hopes' or 'dreams' would be more accurate terms.”_

_His eyes stayed locked in hers. They looked like pieces of the sky, bright and breath-taking, sparkling with a light Cara would rather not think about._

“ _Is that so?” she teased._

_Danny nodded. Cara thought she could see a light blush appear on his cheeks._

“ _It's not much. I've always wanted a farm, you know?”_

“ _A farm? Really?”_

“ _What can I say, I'm a hopeless romantic.” Dan sat back and propped his elbows on his bend knees, watching the stars above. “A small farm somewhere quiet and peaceful – Naboo, maybe. Someone to share the rest of my days with. Maybe a couple of rug rats...”_

_A sheepish smile curled his mouth as he ducked his head with a small laugh._

_Cara didn't know what to say._

_Everyone had plans, in their troops. Hopes and dreams, as Danny had called them. Cara didn't see the point in it: even if any of them survived, what could they possibly go back to? Most of them were here because they had lost everyone and everything._

“ _How can you think about bringing children into this fucked up world?” she wondered. It wasn't meant to reach Dan's ears, but it did, and made him exhale a long, weary sigh._

“ _It won't be like this forever. You'll see,” he said, interrupting her rebuttal before she could even open her mouth, “one day this galaxy will be a good place to raise kids.”_

“ _Good luck with that,” she replied sarcastically, bringing the bottle to her lips again._

_Danny watched her and smiled. She could see his wistful expression out of the corner of her eye, the aching affection in his look._

_She closed her eyes._

_With soft sigh, Danny whispered, “I'm afraid luck won't be enough to make these dreams come true.”_

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly started this story meaning to squeeze it into a oneshot with a considerably lighter descriptive side and a very different narrative style, but it didn't work out and it got longer than intended. My bad, as usual.
> 
> I feel like this isn't as good as chapter one, and though I'm very bitter about this, I can't bring myself to either delete this or leave it unfinished. Forgive me, I'm so much better at fluff and humour. When this is done, no more angst, I swear!

**Author's Note:**

> And that was part 1. Part 2 coming soon, because I just can't put this story down.
> 
> Fair confession: I'm 100% sure Cara wasn't a Captain when she fought for the New Republic but I just loved the idea of her and Danny calling each other Captain and Lieutenant while flirting, so I just rolled with it. Accuracy is overrated, anyway. ;)
> 
> This story's themes are very delicate and very tough topics to write about and I'm aware I can in no way get any close to describing the unthinkable grief of a mother losing her child, so I apologise in advance if any part of this story feels inaccurate or superficial. I did research for this and honestly did my best even though angst isn't my genre of choice when it comes to writing. I hope this was good enough.


End file.
